beautifulgarbage
by Celeste Goodchild
Summary: A series of drabbles inspired by the titles of Garbage songs. Featured characters include Nemuro, Mikage, Tokiko, Mamiya, Anthy, Akio, Nanami, Saionji, Touga, Utena, Ruka, Wakaba, Kanae, Miki and Kozue.
1. So Like A Rose

These stories are just a "series" of pieces I wrote as part of a challenge I set myself…the challenge was to write some drabbles based on the titles and partly on the lyrics of songs by the band Garbage. I've done two before – _when i grow up _and _deadwood_ – but I wanted to do some more. The stories that follow are some of what resulted from this challenge. There are numerous characters starring in these pieces as the narrators, and a couple are actual pairings.

**_so like a rose_, rated pg. nemuro/mamiya suggested (garbage challenge). pre-series. 455 words.**

_(sleeping with ghosts: it's such a lonely experience)_

"Do you think it's scientifically possible for ghosts to exist, professor?"

He looked up from his tea, frowned. It had not tasted bitter until now, but then he hadn't stopped liking bitter tea until he had met Tokiko and her younger brother. "What makes you ask, Mamiya?"

"Curiosity," he replied quietly, his own tea growing cold as he left it untouched. The pot sitting by his left hand, made of terracotta and filled with a miniature rose bush with a single red bloom, trembled slightly as Mamiya accidentally pushed against the table while shifting in his chair. "I respect your opinion, Professor Nemuro. I'd like to know what you think."

"Scientifically, it is impossible." His reply was bland, carefully spoken. "Ghosts do not exist."

"But eternity does?"

Nemuro set his tea aside, fixed his gaze totally on the pale young boy sitting opposite him in the cool conservatory filled with dead and dried flowers in perpetual bloom. "We can make it exist, Mamiya. I believe that. Your sister believes that. Therefore, you should believe it too."

"I believe in ghosts," Mamiya said quietly, and Nemuro noticed again that the potted rose sitting before him is red, blooming, alive. "But that doesn't make you believe in them, does it?"

"That rose must have been expensive to buy, this time of the year."

Mamiya did not react to the change in topic. "I wanted something alive in this garden, professor. Sometimes the cost is never too much, not when you want something to be alive for you."

Mamiya so often says what he wants to say wrapped up in metaphor and simile; the words made Nemuro look away, sigh. "Better alive than a ghost, after all."

"I wouldn't want to be a ghost," he says, and his voice was very troubled, "because you don't believe in ghosts, do you professor?"

"You're so like a rose," and the words fell out of his mouth before he could take them back. "Like that rose, blooming even in the winter, bright as blood against the snow."

Mamiya smiled, the gesture oddly sad and wistful. "As a scientist, professor, you should know that no rose blooms forever. This rose won't survive the winter." He looked up then, titled his head. "That's my sister's car."

Nemuro usually looked forward to Tokiko's arrival home when he spent time with her brother. As he was left staring at the already-wilting rose in its pot of earth, Mamiya going to greet his sister, that day he wished that he could have Mamiya to himself for just a little while longer. He was so like a rose; he only bloomed for so long, and Nemuro was only beginning to realise how short that long really was.


	2. Milk

**_milk_, rated pg-13. kozue-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 411 words.**

_(i am lost so i am cruel but i'd be love and sweetness if i had you)_

The milk has gone sour and it makes her feel nauseous to have to smell it. It also makes no sense – how can the milk have gone sour? Miki is in charge of this sort of thing, after all – he's the one who drinks the milk. Sweetens it and drinks it and pretends he's back in the garden of eternal summer with the pretty music that never really existed in the first place.

So how the hell can the milk have gone sour?

It's late, and she hasn't turned on any lights since re-entering the house. She knows she doesn't need to, after all. Miki will be lying awake in his bed upstairs next to her empty one, woken as always by the distant sound of her key turning in the lock. It would sound silly to anyone who doesn't understand the bond between twins, but Kozue's perfectly aware that her comings and goings would always awaken her brother even if she was as silent as the timid little mouse she has never been.

No, the only light now is that from the refrigerator as she stands in the kitchen, uniform still dishevelled from her last "date." The carton she holds in her hand holds only sour milk and it's making her dizzy, making her want to run up those stairs and shake it under Miki's nose. Surely he'll understand then…understand as he smells the congealing milk in the carton, sees the fingerprints of that boy all over her skin, hears the musical notes that are all off-key and tuneless at last…

Surely then he'll then understand that the garden is gone and that Kozue only stays out every night because she feels too dirty to crawl into his bed with him when he is so clean.

Oh, yes, the milk has gone sour, but then it's not really surprising that Miki hasn't noticed it at all. 

Kozue throws it out. Miki never will, after all. He'd just drink it anyway and smile even as it rotted away inside of him like so much cancer. She can't bear the thought of it, for it makes her as angry as it makes her despair.

Kozue resents her brother's inability to accept harsh reality, sometimes because it is so alien to her own nature that flips the shining coin to find the tarnish underneath. Sometimes, however, she resents it simply because she knows perfectly well that she can never be that way herself.


	3. Nobody Loves You

**_nobody loves you_, rated pg-13. anthy-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 670 words.**

_(i cracked a piece of broken glass)_

I pity him as much as I pity myself, sometimes. Pity him even as I lie against him in the darkness of this illusory building of memory just waiting to return to its true charred self. You don't see with your eyes here, after all, you only perceive with your mind…and all that's in one's head in this place is what my brother wants to be there, including what this man sees of me.

He doesn't love this girl, after all (this girl that Tenjou Utena is so convinced is the pawn of everybody else, the girl nobody ever cares about until she can be used as a bartering tool in some farcical transaction with the universe!). No, he loves the boy who doesn't even look the slightest bit like the boy he once knew, when they were both different people in a place that doesn't really change at all. I am just an illusion in this form, the shadow of a rose long since withered and dead. He can't tell the difference with the scent of roses clogging even his scientific senses against the true smell of smoke and rot and the end of everything that they used to be. 

The illusion won't last much longer, of course. The gauntlet of duellists is running down like a wind-up clock eventually does, and there will be only Mikage left for the One Engaged to release from this make-believe world. He won't understand why until he is gone, of course, but he is the lucky one here. He'll leave this place, finally let the hall stand _forever_ as a Memorial without the man of that memory still haunting its halls in this acquired form, and he'll be more free than someone like me can ever imagine.

Perhaps he'll miss this person I pretend to be, wish that he could have held onto this illusion for a little while longer…and more fool him. Better not to be loved, after all, than to be loved by a false shadow that never really existed in the first place.

It's coming to an end, this little farce…and I, for one, am more relieved than anyone will ever know. 

I never knew him the way he used to be, but even I can see the change that this school has wrought in his very being. He's still so cool, so collected…but there's a passion burning just under his skin that deepens his laugh, twists his smiles, darkens his eyes. The professor was never that way. He was clumsy in his dealings with people, while Mikage is as smooth as glass and yet nowhere near as transparent. You could see through the professor, for he had no graces and no foibles to wear as a cloak against the world. He simply did not care…and now Mikage, ah, he cares too much.

Sometimes I feel glad that I am going to free the professor at last, strip away this mask and give him to my brother to graduate him from this place of cracked dreams and broken spirits. I can only hope he'll have enough of himself left to be able to rebuild his spirit again…because while he is no prince, while the action of digging under his skin and hollowing out his heart does not break my heart as does performing  the same act with Tenjou Utena, I still regret that I am the one who is doing this to him now. 

I can comfort myself sometimes with the thought that I didn't break him first. It's hollow comfort when I see how many cracks I've added to the broken glass of his mind, ever knowing that I will be the straw that shatters the camel's back... 

…and it _will _shatter him to know that nobody loves him after all. That knowledge is almost enough to make me change my mind, but I know I won't. Better to have nobody love you, after all, that have someone like my brother love you as much as he loves me.


	4. Driving Lesson

**_driving lesson_, rated pg-13. touga/saionji (garbage challenge). post-series. 410 words.**

_(i can make you clean if you want me to)_

Neither one is quite aware whose idea it was. It probably doesn't matter, at least not now as they stand in the park and survey the bike. It is shiny and new, for Touga – being Touga – had insisted on buying the bike precisely for this reason, for this experiment.

Saionji doesn't blame him. In fact, if Touga hadn't got to it before him, he's well aware he probably would have bought the bike himself. It seems appropriate, this new bike, this clean slate.

"Well, get on," Touga says as he holds the bike upright by one handle. "Can't ride it alone, now can I?"

"Touga, you know I can't get on it until you do."

"No," says Touga, rather patiently, "I get on after you. You're driving."

Saionji blinks as he pushes his now short hair away from his face – Touga's is still impossibly red, still impossibly long – and frowns. "What?"

"You're driving," Touga repeats, still with that odd indulgent patience he never really had as a child, a teenager. "I know it's like a trip down memory lane, Saionji, but I want you to drive."

Saionji looks at the shiny new bicycle, and finds that he can't help but start smiling. "I don't know how."

"You've always known how," Touga disagrees with a half-hidden smile of his own, "and can probably do it better than me anyway. But I'll show you how, if you insist."

And so Saionji takes the front of the bike, strong hands unsure as they grip the handle. Touga's hands are much more confident as they grasp about his waist; Saionji can nearly feel his smile as he says "Go!"

And so they whiz through the park, picking up speed as they dodge children and ducks and fountains and trees – two grown men on a grown-up bicycle, riding it like two demented children as they whoop and take corners at silly speeds. Saionji can't help but call back to his companion as they round another: "Why did we never do this when we were kids?"

Touga's shout back is barely audible over the wind pushing against them both, even as they continue to go forward. "Because we were kids, Saionji!"

"Kyouichi," he corrects without even thinking.

"Kyouichi," Touga repeats obediently, and laughs. At least Saionji thinks that he is laughing – it might just be the wind in his ears, blowing them forward and away from all the dust that covers their  childhood so long past. 


	5. Dog New Tricks

**_dog new tricks_, rated pg. akio-centric (garbage challenge). post-series. 494 words.**

_(nothing you learn will stick)_

Without the Bride, he can't help but be lost. Even his great ego can not prevent him from seeing this as clearly as he can see the glasses still set upon his desk.

The problem, he muses as he holds up the little tie her familiar had always worn about its fat little neck while brother and sister had ruled over the dream kingdom of Ohtori Academy, is that he has never had to do anything without her before. Oh, they both have their own power, with or without one another, but they are as complementary as earth and air, water and fire, sun and moon. They can survive without one another, certainly, but neither will be the same for the absence of the other.

He wonders if Anthy understands that as well as he does.

Looking out from one of the tall windows of the observatory, he can see the school laid out before him like a toy city, just waiting for the player to move the pawns as he sees fit. It was his domain once, and it still is his domain now. Anthy's departure has changed the rules, of course, but the game still exists even now.

It's not so easy to change, after all. Akio's more than aware than any of what Utena has done, what she has shown Anthy without even realising what she was doing. Utena has left Ohtori, after all, ever thinking that she has failed Anthy…not knowing that she did in fact bring about something of a revolution for Anthy after all.

Still, Akio has to smile when he realises that not even Anthy realises what a revolution is – it is only an empty movement that just spins around until it at last comes full circle. There's no need for him to change what he does after all, because the road that leads ever onward from this school will just bring her right back home.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks, no, but then, Akio wonders how Anthy learned even momentarily what Utena had to teach her. She's just as old as he is, after all…and it is that knowledge that keeps his fading hopes alive. Anthy crawled out of her coffin, perhaps, but that does not mean she is not still dragging it behind her like an escaped dog trailing its leash. It stands to reason that the coffin will overtake her one day, for she can change no more than he can. They are the same, after all – and he knows one day he'll make sure he'll be the one to pull her right back into their shared coffin and close the lid tight. He still has a few tricks up his sleeve…and indeed, some of them are new.

He'll continue to play prince in this coffin forever, perhaps, but he'll make sure he's never doing it alone. This coffin she created all those years ago always had been made for two.  


	6. My Lover's Box

**_my lover's box_, rated pg-13. nemuro/utena (garbage challenge). post-series. 739 words.**

_(i'm afraid i'll never get to heaven so send me an angel)_

She found the box under his side of the bed late one afternoon not long before he was due home from work. She didn't make it a habit to snoop through the things he kept tidied away so neatly in their half-ordered, half-disordered apartment, but then she didn't make it a habit to clean up what he regarded to be her "messes" either. That day she had felt like cleaning, and given it happened so rarely she felt she should run with her instinct.

The box was a simple thing, made of a wood she couldn't identify and carved with little roses that almost made her drop it. She had hated roses for such a long time that she couldn't remember ever liking their heavy petals and heavier scent, but she held on to the box for one reason only. From the beginning she knew he hated roses as much as she did, so why has she found this box under their bed?

It was filled with odd little pieces of memorabilia, she found as she carefully sifted through the contents. Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside their bed (his side made, her side looking like a herd of elephants had struck in the dead of night) she removed movie ticket stubs, dinner receipts, concert tickets (most classical, but a few are pop concerts she talked him into), old wine corks, pieces of ribbon from gifts, dried flowers, old diaries and calendars…and photographs. Prints, Polaroids, negatives, framed portraits. Some she recognised, while others…she had no idea at the time they'd ever been taken at all.  

What struck her the most, however, was the fairytale book. It was very old, she could see that; she wondered if it had belonged to someone much earlier in his family history. It was the date in there that made her think, it part of an inscription. 

_To Mamiya: happy fifth birthday! Love from your big sister, 1952._

It wasn't just that odd faded script that made her wonder, though – it was more the way her partner has gone through the pages and replaced the head of every prince in every fairytale with a picture of her face. 

"What are you doing?"

He has always moved silently, but after five years together she was no longer surprised by his sudden cat-like appearances. Instead she just craned her head, tilted the box in his direction as he came to kneel at her side. 

"What is this?"

He pinked slightly, reached up one hand to adjust his spectacles. "It's just…stuff."

"I can see that." She sifted a hand through the contents again, her expression belying her surprise. "I just…never thought you would keep this kind of…_stuff_."

"I know you don't think me very sentimental, but even I have my moments." He was usually so calm, and it felt deeply odd to see him so vulnerable as she inclined the open pages of the fairytale book to him. "I just…"

"Who is Mamiya?"

"I don't know," and somehow the blunt confusion in his voice assured her he was speaking the truth. "I just…I've always had that book. Like all of these things, I can't let it go."

"Why did you put me in it?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

"Sometimes I'm afraid you'll ride away one day," he said quietly, a hand not quite touching the face pasted over the fairytale prince's. "And I need you to stay. I need you to be with me so very much."

She reached over, placed an arm around his slumped shoulders. "You don't need to make a million memories of me to keep in a box under your bed, you know," she whispered into his ear. "You don't need to make me into a prince in a fairytale so I can always save you…because I'll always be right here."

He nodded, was quiet as she guided them both to their feet to where she was only attempting to make them dinner in the kitchen. He was a much better cook than she, after all. Still, three weeks later when she looked under the bed, the box was still there. She didn't open that time, leaving it under his bed with a sigh. If he wanted to keep a piece of her in a box forever, who was she to complain? 

After all, princes know better than anyone that their lives are never truly their own, anyway. 


	7. Medication

**_medication_, rated pg-13. saionji-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 548 words.**

_(it's really not surprising/i hold a force i can't contain)_

She is like a balm to him, cool on fevered skin and soothing to torn flesh. It is an odd feeling for Saionji Kyouichi, simply because he does not think he has ever met a person who has not awakened his more violent emotions in favour of all others. After all, there are two types of people in Saionji's world – those he sees, and those he does not. 

He feels nothing for those he does not see, the crowds of girls who call his name and write him letters dripping with false honey, the crowds of boys who want to be him without any of the real effort it takes to be a real kendoka.  

For those he does see, the emotions are too-bright and burning – jealousy, dislike, disdain, bitterness, hate. 

This girl, the girl who brings him cups in the amusing shape of sheep, she awakens a too-bright emotion in him that he has not felt since childhood – sweet, calm affection. And it is different from what he felt as a child, for it is made more lovely by her easy acceptance of his friendship. She expects nothing in return for what she gives him, and his friendship is all he can offer her.

He can't offer it now, however. The Black Rose Society has offered him an in back into the world of the Academy and he can not turn the cool man down. The sweet salve of her presence has only masked the roiling emotions still deep inside of his ripped-up heart, and it can not heal it the way it needs to even under her gentle touch. He must step back into the world of this school as his old self to find his own way to real health again. 

Now he will leave her, alone in this cheerful little room which is just now catching the last rays of the setting sun. He kids himself that she will understand, those dark eyes softened as always with the knowledge that he must go his own way while she goes hers. After all, they are two different types of people, aren't they? Even Saionji, with his complete lack of social grace, is aware of the gulf that lies between what she is and what he is. She calls them the "special" people; he simply calls them the "better" people even though he's not sure he believes it. He knows enough to understand that they are not necessarily better, only different.

In fact, as he prepares to take his leave of the sweet girl with the curling hair and dark soft eyes that he can't be better than her, not if he is doing a thing like this. This is the way the world works, however, and this is the path he has chosen. It would be nice to stay with her, perhaps, but the peace he has found here is only an illusion. She calms him, yes, brings his burning temperature down and fills him with a cool, sweet peace…but she is not a panacea. She can not fix everything that is wrong with him.

As he begins to do up the jacket of his council uniform for the first time in weeks, he wonders why it hurts so much to wish that she could.


	8. Happiness Part Two

**_happiness part two_, rated pg-13. kanae-centric (garbage challenge). post-series. 737 words.**

_(don't say no to me daddy)_

The clink of silver against china hurts her head, but she knows perfectly well that she is to stay silent and deferent, as is the role of the eldest and only daughter of a man like her father. 

"So, your son is not staying on another year? It's truly a pity," her mother remarks, taking a small and cultured sip of wine from the crystal glass. The gold bracelet on her slender wrist catches the light from the chandelier and throws it into Kanae's unprotected eyes, making her wince.

The only guest at this table of three echoes her mother's movement, pressing his own glass to his narrow lips. "No, he's not, though of course he will stay affiliated with this school. He will be attending the sister campus in Amsterdam."

"And his sister, your lovely daughter, will she be going too?"

"Oh, of course. It will be easier to keep an eye on them both, given that I am working in Amsterdam myself at the moment."

"The school will miss you, of course."

"Yes, I understand that things are rather difficult for you now, what with the loss of your former acting dean. Kanae isn't marrying him after all, I hear?"

"No," her mother sighs, as Kanae stares at her plate and wonders why it only occurred to her now that being talked about as if one was not really there is one of the most singularly horrible things to have to endure at a dinner table. She's done it for years…but only tonight has she realised how much she hates it. 

"No," her mother repeats, "unfortunately Akio-san feels the need to follow his sister, who has most inappropriately run away from the school without warning. Of course we'll find another man suited to our daughter and to the school, but…never one quite like him, I imagine. Kanae is of course very upset, but she knows that she'll find her happiness elsewhere."

Kanae herself is not so sure; as she watches one of the serving-hands fill first Kaoru-san's plate, then her mother's, then her own…she remembers a conversation with her father, her begged words to be released now that Akio has left her out in the cold without a husband, without the future she had been so dependent on.

"You can't go, Kanae," her father's reedy voice had whispered across the heavy stale air of his sickroom. "You are my only daughter, and the only way this family will continue. This family is the school, and you are the family…therefore you are the school as much as I am, and you cannot leave."

She had thought bitterly that her father's illness must be great indeed if he thought that this school was still that of the Ohtori family. Akio might be indicating his inclination to leave, but she thought that the presence of that dangerous and beautiful man would forever be a part of these old French buildings. It was like the way pictures left imprints of unfaded wallpaper on the walls after many years hanging there. Akio would be gone, perhaps, but everyone would always know that he had been here once upon a more peculiar dream-time.

And now he was leaving, leaving because his strange alien of a sister had left before him, and he apparently could not stay without her. 

Funny. While Anthy was here, she had never considered how the girl had felt about anything. She had been like a walking talking living doll, always doing as asked – even if she did said things in peculiar fashions – and Kanae had never thought it strange at all, had simply been jealous of the hold Anthy had always held over Akio's heart. It isn't until now, sitting across from her mother and perpendicular to Kaoru-san, father of the former secretary of the student council, that she realises that the blankness in Anthy's empty gaze and emptier smiles wasn't so disturbing because there was nothing there…it was so disturbing because there was. And it had been something that cried for release even as it understood completely that some song-birds were bred to be caged forever. 

And Kanae, looking down now at the plate filled for her with food she doesn't want to eat, realises that the true depth of her uneasiness comes from realising that if someone looked at her face now, they might see the same thing she now knows was always in Anthy's. 


	9. Vow

**_vow_, rated pg-13. ruka-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 428 words.**

_(i came around to tear your little world apart)_

You tasted of sweat and of tears, when I kissed you that balmy afternoon. It was sweeter than any taste I could have imagined before I knew the flavour of your lips. I have wondered for far too long what it would be like to kiss you at last, and even though…even though my fantasies always had you reacting in much a different way to the way in which you did, it was still enough for me.

You don't understand what it is that I wish to do, but then it is perhaps better that way. You would be able to mount a better defence if you could see the way in which your enemy is coming at you, after all…because I always taught you to fight that way. To read your opponent's moves before making your own, to be the hunter rather than the hunted. 

You are the hunted this time, however, much as I am loathe to paint you in such an unflattering light. You should never be at the mercy of anyone, after all. You should be the one to give your mercy as you please, as your strong heart dictates…the way you do with everybody else except for that slip of a girl. That girl who dangles above your heart a sword of Damocles that you must surely know will fall and skewer that heart like a fallen duellist's rose. 

I am turning my own sights on you simply because you should never be between anybody's crosshairs. You are strong, you are beautiful, there should be nothing in this world capable of pulling you down to drown in the mud beneath your feet. And yet you've somehow convinced yourself that you are dirty, shameful, that your beauty and strength are but strong masks over a weak face. It's not true, not true at all…and I vow that I will show you that.

I will release you, for creatures like you are not made to be caged, kept in a petting zoo by creatures too weak to realise that true beauty exists only in perfect freedom. 

I've hurt you already, and I am going to hurt you again. I am going to break your heart…but I'll give you mine in return. You can have my heart, Juri, because I believe that after this I simply won't have much use for it anymore. Still, it doesn't matter, not at all – because I have made my vow, and now I will do what I am here to do. 

Don't worry, Juri. Don't worry about anything at all. 


	10. Breaking Up The Girl

**_breaking up the girl_, rated pg. anthy-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 452 words.**

_(i am afraid that there's much to be afraid of)_

Watching her sleep, sometimes I wonder what I am doing to her.

One might think that playing the role of a helpless, thoughtless, useless little doll would become harder as the years march endlessly past. It doesn't. It in fact becomes easier, because the pain of being the Rose Bride turns the volume down on everything else in the world. Nothing matters quite the way it used to, not when you walk through every day with the awareness that every step is hindered by the sharp pain of a sword through your hip, your knee, your entire leg. 

There are holes in my heart, made by a thousand and more swords – all the emotion that I have ever held in that heart has come pouring out long ago. I feel so little, or at least I thought that was the way it is. Utena has turned the volume up again, and it hurts even to look at her…and the pain isn't just mine. I am feeling her agony and indecision as well as I am beginning to feel my own again. 

Utena holds my hand while she sleeps, while she thinks I sleep too. But I don't sleep for a long while after I come back to her after seeing my brother. Instead, I watch her as she's away with the proverbial sandman, and wonder what she is dreaming of. Sometimes it is my brother – I know that better than even him, I think – but sometimes, I think that it is me.

Utena is falling apart. Anyone with half a mind can see that, though in the case of so many people in this make-believe world, half a mind is more than anyone else has got. Yes, Utena is falling to pieces, the noble prince brought so low by the realisation of her gender, and I can't help but feel deep sorrow to see it, and know that it is all my fault.

I've broken princes before. Still, I've never broken a girl before. I wonder why it feels so strange to do it? Is it because a girl should already be broken, shouldn't exist in any form that can be ripped to pieces the way we are doing to Utena?

Still, as I watch Utena, I think that perhaps it has very little to do with the fact that she is a girl, the fact that she is still a prince even as she falls from that white horse she has tried to tame. It's all about the fact that I'm breaking up the girl so I can have my own prince back, ever afraid the whole time that she is my real prince and I'm just breaking up myself, too.  


	11. Butterfly Collector

**_butterfly collector_, rated pg. mikage-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 572 words.**

_(you've achieved your aim by making the walking lame)_

He is not an entomologist, but he can identify almost any butterfly that is brought before him. In one of the disused classrooms of Nemuro Memorial Hall, there is a large collection of butterflies sprawled upon their corkboards. Even though they are so long dead he knows they struggled against the pins that held them down, struggled even as the chloroform took their small minds somewhere far distant from the places where they died.

Sometimes Mikage goes to look at the butterflies. He likes to kid himself that it is a mere scientific past-time, going to the abandoned science classroom and looking at the specimen boxes upon the wall. In the end he knows it is not. He can stand before them all he likes, ungloved hands clasped behind his back as he recites the names like a mantra of forgotten potency, but he knows that it is about more than the names of a few dead butterflies.

He does wonder, upon occasion, who collected these butterflies in the first place. There is no name in the corner of the boxes, the same way there are no small hand-written cards identifying the butterflies and stating when they had been collected. Nobody claimed to have collected these butterflies. He wonders why it should bother him even as he names the dead insects for the collector who did not.

These butterflies remind him of those who come to his seminar, of course. He collects them himself, then he drives the knowledge of who they could really be through their hearts like the pin of a butterfly collector as they struggle in the net that is his elevator. He doesn't chloroform them before he uses those pins, nor does he feel any guilt to see their pain. Pain is cleansing, after all. Pain leads to a greater understanding of oneself than anybody who has never felt it could ever hope to comprehend. 

There's another place he visits often in Nemuro Memorial Hall, similar in its way to the butterfly collection in the disused science classroom. It is a corridor not far from his office, painted pristine white and hung with photograph upon photograph. Each picture is only in shades of grey, not in any real colour at all. It is upon this wall that Mikage hangs his own butterfly collection, without either name nor date. The faces are nameless, their quests timeless…the same way the real dead butterflies are without name nor time in the distant classroom. The symmetry amuses his ordered mind as he uses another nail to hang another photograph.

Yes, this butterfly he recreated may not have succeeded, but science always has been about the fact that no experiment can ever be quite free from human error. More trials, more work, and the aim he wants to achieve will come to fruition…like a butterfly, it will emerge from the chrysalis, take flight in the skies so open and wide for its simple, dazzling beauty. Some butterflies are designed, after all, to be nothing more than specimens in a box. Others are destined to fly free and unhindered in the sky for all time. 

He'll bring eternity to Mamiya by taking those other butterflies down from the sky, using them to give Mamiya the wings with which he can live eternally. He's the butterfly collector, after all, and only the butterfly collector can decide which butterflies will fall, and which will fly forever.


	12. Silence Is Golden

**_silence is golden_, rated pg-13. mamiya-centric (garbage challenge). pre-series. 598 words.**

_(if i am silent then i am not real/but if i speak up then no-one will hear)_

"Mamiya?"

Her voice is quiet in the darkness; I grit my teeth as she turns on the light even as I try to force my face to smooth into a smile. "Neesan."

"Good morning, sleepyhead," she says in that same gentle voice that is more motherly than sisterly, and I struggle to focus on her form as she crosses the room in the too-bright illumination she brought in with her. "You've slept in a little, haven't you? Didn't you remember that Nemuro-san has come to see you this morning?"

Oh, the professor – like the tin-man he is, always fumbling about with unoiled fingers for a heart he doesn't really quite believe exists. He makes my own heart hurt as I wish I could give mine to him, make the real world of emotions and affection an easier place for his too-rigid mind to understand.

"I remember," I say quietly and quite truthfully as I try to sit up in my bed. I'm distressed but not really surprised to find that I can't. Every part of me aches like I spent the night running seven marathons, rather than just heavily asleep in my own sick-bed. "I just…wanted to sneak a little extra sleep."

"You're so naughty," she says quite cheerfully as she yanks the curtains open, lets in the pathetic dim light of this winter morning. "But I think I'll just – Mamiya!"

I wince. I recognise that horrified, faintly accusing tone altogether too well. "Yes, neesan?"

"You're not well!"

"I'm fine, neesan," I struggle to say evenly, calmly even as I just prove to her that I really cannot sit up in my own bed. "Just…it was a long night."

"Are you in pain? You are, aren't you? Oh, Mamiya, I wish you'd tell me these things," she frets as she moves to the little refrigerator that sits in the kneehole of my desk. I know what she is looking for, and it makes me sigh. "I'll send Nemuro-san away, of course. He'll understand, when I tell him how ill you are feeling today--"

"Don't."

"Mamiya!"

"Just…it doesn't hurt, not any more than usual. I don't need any more medicine," and even though I am trying to sound stronger the sudden vigour of my voice genuinely surprises me. "It's okay. Maybe I'm even getting better."

We both know I'm not, but that little white lie is enough to make her smile and for that, perhaps it is worth it. My sister believes in the silliest things for such a smart woman, yes, but I haven't the heart to tell her that I am going to die no matter what she or the professor do for me. So perhaps I shouldn't pity the professor for not having the right kind of heart to love. Perhaps I should pity myself for not having the right kind of heart to speak up and tell my sister how I really feel. It does protect her heart, I guess, even as my own breaks every time she promises me something that no-one could ever give me.

I am in pain now as neesan shows the professor in, her face shining with hope even as he doesn't speak a word to me about whatever they do at that school I once attended myself. The medicine is in the fridge under my old school desk, yes, but I don't ask for it. I suffer in silence as I see their belief in their faces that they'll save me…I just lie here in my silence and in my pain.

Sometimes, I think maybe I deserve it.


	13. Use Me

**_use me, _rated pg-13. kanae-centric (garbage challenge). post-series. 529 words.**

_(your arms look so powerful when they hold me down)_

The apple tasted like the worms I couldn't see, but knew were wriggling through it all the same. Apples are all filled with worms these days, after all. I can't stand them, but my mother keeps bringing them to me all the same. I think maybe it's because she believes that I'm making it all up, that if I am forced to eat the apples I'll know that the worms are all just in my imagination and that I should stop making up such wild, stupid stories.

She doesn't know that the worms _are_ real, that I am glad I can still taste them even if they make this weak body sick because it reminds me of the world I know exists beyond the borders of this one.

I've only been here a few weeks now but I know that I'll be here for much longer. They don't know what to do with me, after all. Me, the pretty girl who is so quiet and so docile until its night-time…and then I am the girl who walks the corridors and laughs and cries and wails that the sky is falling, a demented Chicken Little. 

The sky is falling, though. Like the apples my mother brings me that I can't see are filled with worms until I bite into them, I can't see that the sky is falling until it's night and all the holes are revealed. They're not stars, after all. I used to think they were, but I know now that they're just the beginnings of cracks, the cracks that will grow and grow and let the sky fall down on all of us one day. One day soon.

He taught me that, you know. Both things, that apples are filled with worms and that the stars in the sky are just holes like eyes. I used to be engaged to him, but I'm not anymore. He probably would have broken the engagement anyway, after I came here, but he turned away from me even before my mother had me brought to this sterile white room where the only colours are the red apples she always brings me and the blue sky seen through the mesh window. I wish he hadn't turned away from me.  

He used me, I know that. He never loved me, he just used me for some reason that I don't know even now. I don't care, though. He made me feel real, because he showed me the way that the world really is...pretty surfaces with ugly depths, all just waiting to fall apart and be remade.

I want him to remake me. 

She could have been something, they say. Such a pretty girl, with such a bright future ahead of her…but I don't see a future, not anymore. I just see apples filled with worms and the sky cracking like an old mirror and all I can do is laugh. Laugh and laugh because no man wants me now, not in this state…and even in this state it doesn't matter because there's only one man that I want anyway.

I want him to use me. At least then maybe I'd feel real again.


	14. Sleep Together

**_sleep together_, rated pg-13. miki/kozue (garbage challenge). series-set. 645 words.**

_(i got you crawling up a mountain, hanging round my neck)_

The concept of his sister as a beautiful, desirable body is a peculiar one to his still-childish mind. Yet the shock of that realisation seems very far away as she comes to him, pale as ivory in the moonlight. 

"I'm your bride, Miki," she says quietly as she crawls into his bed with him, the darkness not so dark at all with the harsh eye of the moon glaring down at them through the half-closed curtains. "I want to stay with you tonight."

"My bride?"

"Your bride," and she curls up into and against his side, a warm body filled with blood so similar to that which courses through his own veins. But despite the power of her presence, of her voice and her bold eyes, she still feels like a fragile bag of bird-bones against him tonight. He's reminded of the baby birds that she had rescued earlier this same week, and wonders if it is really so odd that they'd turn to each for comfort and warmth in this otherwise empty nest.

Her fingers are gentle on his skin, tracing patterns that are too disordered and chaotic for his orderly mind to make sense of, but they make him tremble all the same. He sighs, turns his head even though he can still feel her warm breath tickling the nape of his neck.

"I just want to hold you," and his voice is so unsure in the darkness, even now with all that he knows thanks to what lurks at the ends of the world she helped take him to. "Just…hold you."

Perhaps they were in the womb like this together, once upon a time. Two small bodies, naked and warm as they pressed together in a place where they, and only they, mattered at all. 

"Why are you doing this, Kozue?" he asks finally, his voice small in the too-large room. 

Her hands are in his hair, turning his face back to hers. "Because I am your bride, Miki."

"You are always my sister before that, Kozue."

"Sometimes, Miki, those two things aren't so different." She smiles, gently kisses his lips so briefly that he can't react quickly enough to pull away from her. "At least, not for people like us."

He has made his sister into a bride so he can fight for possession of another, and it makes him wonder as he lies in his bed with his sister in his arms. Makes him wonder if he's really ready to flap his wings at last and leave the nest he shares with his sister, the nest they'd been left to make a home out of alone when their parents had themselves flown away. 

He doesn't think he's strong enough to go very far, but what really bothers him is the fact that he knows Kozue is that strong…and yet she'll wait for him forever…just because she is his sister. 

He closes his eyes, holds her tighter and listens to her sleep. He himself doesn't sleep at all, at all. He thinks he can hear the branch their fading nest rests upon rocking, rocking in the growing wind. It will fall, one day, and he knows they'll both fall from it. He'll never leave the nest, after all…and he knows perfectly well that Kozue will never leave him alone, not again. They are two baby birds, only one of which ever wanted to grow up.  

Oh, he'll try to leave the nest tomorrow, but even now it's obvious he will only go so far. Kozue will press him ever forward, but she'll return with him when he can go no further. That is, after all, not only the role of the bride…but of a sister.

He holds her closer, and realises clearly for the first that she is right…that the two are really not so very different at all, at all.


	15. Wicked Ways

**_wicked ways_, rated r. mikage/mamiya  (garbage challenge). series-set. 433 words.**

_(i've done things i'd never thought i'd do so sure it helps to lose myself in you)_

He fucks Mamiya, but sometimes he wonders if Mamiya is in fact fucking him. 

It's an odd feeling, given that Mamiya always allows him the illusion of complete control. Mikage always initiates these moments, after all; it is he who reaches forward across the tank holding the roses, and presses his lips to Mamiya's. Mamiya doesn't protest – he never does – and he always follows Mikage from the water where the black roses grow in their pretty malignant forms to where they can be even more completely alone.

He can't remember ever having had anyone other than Mamiya, and can't imagine ever having anyone but. The scent of his body, the press of his fingers are burned into his memory, searing away everything but the knowledge of sweet dark skin, pale silken hair and too-deep green eyes. Mamiya is an omnipotent presence in his mind at the best of times, but when they are together like this…ah, it is as if Mamiya is completely taking him over, over and over. 

He has his wicked way with Mamiya, yes, but sometimes he thinks that perhaps it is more Mamiya having his wicked way with him. 

"Are you all right, sempai?"

How strange, that he still speaks to him like he is his senior even as Mikage muses that Mamiya is perhaps really the one in control here. "A little time, and I'll be all right," he says quietly into the dimness of this room under the Hall that looks so clean and ordered and yet is still haunted by the all-pervasive smell of smoke. He'd open the windows to let the fresh air in to whisk it away if he didn't already know that it doesn't work, will never work. 

"You sound far away."

"How could I be, with every reason to stay here with you?"

It seems Mamiya's too-sharp ears can hear the faint uncertainty underwriting every word he says in this bed. "You're never wrong, sempai," Mamiya says quietly, dark fingers ghosting lightly over his bare skin in this darkness. "None of it is wrong, because everything you do, you do it for me."

"Do I?"

"You'd be a wicked man if you didn't," Mamiya whispers, and Mikage knows he is smiling because he can feel the shape of his lips as they press against the skin over his heart. "A very wicked man indeed, sempai."

The thing is, though, that Mikage is aware that even if he was doing this only for Mamiya, he'd still be a wicked man…and he doesn't even care. He also has absolutely no idea why he should. 


	16. Stupid Girl

**_stupid girl_, rated pg-13. nanami-centric (garbage challenge). series-set. 548 words.**

_(a million lies to sell yourself is all you ever had)_

I was so stupid.

I never thought that it was possible that he wasn't my brother, after all. Why should I think that? Everyone who ever looked at us knew completely that we were brother and sister, simply because there was nobody else like us in the school. Nobody as intelligent, as witty, as stylish and as _perfect_. We were both these things, and so of course it made perfect sense that we were two roses from the same perfect blooming bush. Only a brother and sister could be this way, after all.

Still, I knew even then…back when I believed that we were from the same dreaming fairytale place…that I wasn't made all those things just because I was born that way. He brought them all out in me, made them real, made _me_ real. Until then everything inside me was hidden, sleeping like some forgotten beauty in some rotting tower. My brother made me beautiful, and he made me real…and I loved him for it. Loved him so much.

You can see that, in these photos that I brought from home (the place I cannot go now because he is still there!) the love that I felt for my brother. It's everywhere…in the way my little hand clutches his, in the way I smile only at him, in the way you can little flickers of me – strands of hair, ribbon, a stray foot or hand – in pictures that were only supposed to be of him. I was attached to him, like a limpet…or one of those shells that attach to those big ships that cross the ocean. They go everywhere, those ships, to all the places where normal people can not live…fantastic places out in the middle of the sea. My brother can do that, you know…I always just held on tight so I could go the same places.

I thought that maybe I could have gone to those places by myself, but I never wanted to. I always only wanted something if I could share it with my brother. Now I know…now I know that I can't go to those magical places myself at all. 

I'm not his sister. He's not my brother. I am nothing special. I pretended for so many years not knowing it was all based on a lie, and I just… 

I want to rip up all these photos and scatter them to the sky outside this borrowed bedroom window, the sky that looks so totally empty even with all the stars stuck up in it. It's so high up, this tower – I have no idea how that Himemiya girl and Tenjou Utena sleep up here. Actually, I don't know how they even _live_ in this tower…it's so dark, so creepy, so…

But then, Himemiya and her brother probably like it. They're brother and sister, after all…you can tell, because they're just the same.

Not like my brother and me…not that he's really my brother. Why can't I stop calling him that? Why can't I just…stop it? Why am I so stuck on something when I know I should let it go? Why can't I just stop loving him because he's not my brother at all…?!

I am a type B who gets stuck on things.

I am still so stupid.


	17. Subhuman

**_subhuman_, rated pg-13. nemuro-centric (garbage challenge). pre-series. 756 words.**

_(how low can you go?)_

I had never been down to the basement before the day I brought the coffin. There'd never been any reason for me to go downstairs, and I am not fond of such places as a general rule anyway. It is not that I am claustrophobic or anything of the sort – what scientist would be afraid of the irrational, after all? – I just…do not like cool, dark places under the earth. Geology has never interested me much, nor do any of the other earth sciences. I am a physicist and a mathematician by nature, dealing in theoretical weavings of numbers (both real and imaginary) into webs that act as the mesentery holding the universe together.

Perhaps that is the reason why he hired me for this task. After all, it would seem peculiar to ask a grounded scientist to bring about the impossible. To bring down to his earth an upside-down castle holding eternity, a castle that spins in endless revolution like a peculiar kind of perpetual motion machine…and yet here I am. Here I am with pages of neat notes in my computer-like hand, with classrooms with blackboards for walls covered in scratchings of chalk describing the universe…but not any universe I ever would have thought to believe in. And why do I believe in it now? Why, because this school opened my eyes…pointed out the singularities and irregularities of the world that were more than just random events. Rather they are links in a chain that I can use to bind even a sick and ailing boy to this world for as long as I might wish to do so. 

I want to do it for him now, after all. Only for him. There's no reason to do it for her, not now that I know she never loved me, and never will. I thought we could be a family, Tokiko, Mamiya and I…but now I have only Mamiya left to me to make this family. And I will make it. I know enough to be able to shake out the fabric of this world and twist it to my will. I know the fates now, can act as all three.

Clotho, who weaves the thread of life.

Lachesis, who measures out the thread of life.

Atropos, who cuts the thread of life.

I can do all these things, with all the threads I hold. I have the threads of a hundred boys in my hands now…one hundred and one, if you count my own.

"There's one more left upstairs, Nemuro-kun," he had said to me as I signed that contract at last, placed that ring on my finger. 

"One more what?" I had asked in return, the ring feeling heavier than it should on the finger I had never thought would hold a ring, not until I had first seen Tokiko in my office. 

"One more coffin."

I could still clearly picture the boy pushing what I had thought to be the last coffin, when I had walked away from the sight of Tokiko in this man's arms. "Why hasn't anyone brought it downstairs yet?"

"Because they only bring their own coffins, don't they?" He wasn't smiling, but I think all the same that he was laughing…at me, rather than with, perhaps. "We make our own coffins, and then we lie in them."

He sounded like he knew all about such matters on a deeply personal level, but it didn't matter so much then. I brought my coffin downstairs, arranged it in this basement. I didn't open it, not then…but now that I am down here, having left Mamiya asleep upstairs in amidst all the bright (bright like the sun, bright like blood!) living roses he brought me as he asked me to bring him eternity in return…

I open the coffin as I stand downstairs in this darkness now, and I feel like laughing. I don't, not only because I've had so very little practice at it. No, it's because I'm afraid that maybe once I start, I just won't stop.

There is nothing in my coffin but a candelabra and a box of matches on a bed of fine-woven silk. I will take both of them upstairs, up where it is brighter than here even in the depths of burgeoning night, and truly set about making my own coffin to sleep in. Yes, a coffin to sleep in even though once I have done this, once I have sunk this low, I am not entirely sure that I will ever sleep again.  


	18. Cup Of Coffee

**_cup of coffee_, rated pg-13. touga/saionji (garbage challenge). post-series. 620 words.**

_(so no of course we can't be friends)_

The coffee is half-gone before the conversation turns.

"So Nanami gave you my number, did she?" Saionji asks suddenly, without preamble as is his way. 

"Yes, she did," Touga replies evenly while displaying no surprise at all at the sudden change in topic. "Why do you say it like that, Saionji?"

Some of his old sullen nature is audibly creeping back into his voice and he hates it; only Touga still holds the ability to make him feel this way, like he should cut off his nose to spite his face just because he can. "Like what?"

Touga's voice is still as smooth as a vestal virgin's skin. "Like an accusation?"

"I never said she could give you my number."

"I suppose that she never thought that she needed permission. We are old friends, aren't we?"

"Old being the operative word, yes."

He relaxes back into his chair, long body sliding effortlessly under the fine fabric of his business suit. The dark material contrasts so finely with his pale skin, blazing hair.  "Why did you meet me at all then, Saionji? You obviously didn't want to."

"We were friends, Touga. It's just that we can't be friends anymore."

"What makes you say that?"

Pushing the cooling coffee aside – coffee he never wanted in the first place, and not only because Touga had insisted on paying for it – he shakes his head sharply. "We're different people now. We've grown up…whatever we had as children, we grew out of. I think it's better for us to let it lie."

"So you're telling me you don't want to see me again over a cup of coffee? Very melodramatic, Saionji."

He stands up, unable to cope with the smooth-talking businessman seated across from him in this suave little coffee-shop. "I'm sorry, Touga," and he's not sure for what. Nanami had warned him that Touga hadn't changed much at all; why had he been so determined not to believe her once he'd heard the voice on the phone again? And if that was so true, why _had_ she given him his number after all? "I don't know why I came."

"I know why you came," Touga says quietly as he stands himself, and Saionji knows he probably does. It will, after all, be the same reason why Nanami provided him with that damned number even though she knew better. "You'll always be my one and only friend, Saionji."

"He who believes he has friends is a fool," he murmurs, quietly as he meets his eyes.

Touga moves too quickly, his hands on his arms and in his hair. The kiss is brutal and yet tender because it moves so deeply under his skin. It is like a thousand sharp thorns from a dozen red roses are being shoved into his flesh wherever Touga is touching him, and by god…by god, even through the pain and the shock, he loves it.

"With friends like this," Touga breathes into ear, oblivious to all others staring at the pair, "who needs anybody else?"

Saionji pulls back, as far as Touga's possessive grip will allow him. "The coffee is getting cold, Touga," is the only thing he can think to say, though his attention is fully fixated on the man before him.

"Let it," he says quietly, and perhaps there really is something of the Touga he remembered as a child still in those too-blue eyes…the child he was before the grown-up world of money and politics and sex and too much damned coffee. Yes, perhaps the Touga he once knew is what he feels as the older Touga leans in kisses him again, whispers against his lips: "I have all I really came for right here, after all."


	19. The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

**_the trick is to keep breathing_, rated pg-13. nemuro-centric (garbage challenge). post-series. 589 words.**

_(maybe you'll get what you want this time around?)_

The third time he comes to lay flowers upon the grave, he meets her. He doesn't know why he should be so surprised; after all, the basic laws of chance suggest that this would surely have happened sooner or later. He also knew perfectly well when he began coming here that she also visits the grave on a regular basis to lay her own flowers over the ground that in turns lies over her brother. 

Still, he has to admit that he is surprised all the same.

His surprise is not as great as hers, however. The roses almost slip from her grasp as she stares at him, her face – still lovely despite all the passed years that still show upon it – pale and drawn. He might have smiled to see the expression, for it is comical in a macabre way, but he seems to have forgotten how.

"Hello, Tokiko," he says quietly, and he knows that his voice is like the rest of him – unchanged down to the most minute of details. Nature has taken its course with Tokiko, but his years in Ohtori left him outside such natural processes. Still, he wonders that if it were possible to carbon-date his brain and all its impossible memories, if that would show his true age all the same. 

She is recovering some of her poise, for she always was elegant and refined. She knows how to hold herself, and only the slightest tremor mars her movement as she comes up beside him, briefly bends to lay the flowers down. "Hello, Nemuro-san." Her voice is quiet, only slightly blunted by her encroaching age. "I never thought I'd see you here."

"I never thought I would see me here, either." His voice is quiet as he continues to kneel beside the grave, looking up at her through violet-tinted glasses. Her still-trim figure is silhouetted against the sun, like a shadow against the wall waiting to tell him some truth he's not ready to hear. "I didn't know he was dead, after all. Not until I graduated from this school."

Her voice is as quiet as a clock that has not only stopped, but never ran forward in the first place. "He's been dead for a very long time, Nemuro-san."

"How do you do it, Tokiko?"

She looks down at him from that greater height for only a moment, then surprises him by kneeling down to his level, her ageing joints only protesting slightly at the movement. "How do I do what, Nemuro-san?" she asks, her voice still as sweet and as fair as he once remembered it to be.

"Live."

She looks down at the roses for a moment, touches a petal briefly. It's bright and soft now, of course, but it will wither and turn to dust soon enough without its roots in the earth. She straightens up again, smoothing her pencil-thin skirt over her thighs, and he expects her to turn and walk away without another word.

Still, she turns back to him, one hand holding her hat against her elegant head as if she expects the growing breeze to whisk it away. "The trick, Nemuro-san," she says quietly, "is to keep breathing."

She turns and walks away then, but Nemuro does not follow her progress away from him, away from all that is left of the real Mamiya. He instead looks at the roses, and smiles. She brings live roses now, like he does. Somehow that gives him more hope than anything she could have said ever would have.


	20. 1 Crush

**_#1 crush_, rated pg-13. nanami/saionji (garbage challenge). post-series. 458 words.**

_(you will believe in me and i can never be ignored)_

The only reason they started seeing each other was because Touga asked him to look out for his little sister. After all, they were at the same university and even though Nanami has a way about her in that she makes herself queen of any castle she waltzes into, Touga still asked his childhood friend to look after her. It's a big bad world out there, after all, even though they all know that the really bad worlds are sometimes the ones that you just don't see until it has already swallowed you whole.

At first it was just the awkward friendship of a pesky little sister and her brother's best friend. Saionji was soon to discover, however, that sharing his burgeoning love of photography with Nanami gave the girl greater depths than he had ever thought the seemingly-shallow girl capable of.  

No-one had been more surprised than Saionji himself when he'd taken up photojournalism, even though he knew it all so obviously stemmed from his deep desire to capture single moments for eternity. He'd only started taking photographs in the last few months of high school; he would spend his time not in class or the dojo finding tiny pockets of time that spoke with perfect clarity before capturing them on film. Journalism had called to him only because he couldn't imagine life as a simple photographer; his body craved for something more, something to make his blood pump faster with a racing heart.

He likes to take simple photographs of Nanami, however. Sometimes she models the clothes she designs, but most of the pictures are not so planned nor so posed. They are simple moments caught without real thought – Nanami sipping her tea, Nanami poring over some heavy design text, Nanami frowning out the window at the unexpected cloud covering the sun. 

Yes, the awkward friendship that blossomed into something approaching a romance baffles everyone but Nanami and Saionji. It is only because they know why it happened, and it is all to do with the way that they came together.     

When they have lunch with Touga, it is obvious to them both who they have really come to see, who their hearts are really tied to. This doesn't bother either of them. In fact, both are completely aware that this is probably the reason why they have stayed together for so long. Occasionally Saionji takes photographs with his ever-present camera at these lunches. Only once did he set the timer and join the brother and sister across the table for a photo of three. That single photo, a moment of eternity pressed into film, says to them both who they really love, while proving at the same time that it doesn't really matter at all.  


End file.
